Jo-Anne McArthur is an award-winning photojournalist, author, and activist who has been documenting the plight of animals around the globe for over a decade. She is the founder of We Animals, an internationally celebrated archive. Over one hundred animal organizations have benefited from her photography, many of which continue to work closely with Jo-Anne on stories, investigations, campaigns and humane education.

Jo-Anne is the subject of Canadian film maker Liz Marshall’s acclaimed documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, and her first book, also entitled We Animals, was published by Lantern Books in 2013. Her work has been featured in Elle Canada, National Geographic Traveler, DAYS Japan, Helsingin Sanomat, Photolife, PDN Online, The Huffington Post, Earth Island Journal, PetaPixel, Sotokoto, Point of View, Alternatives Journal, and Canadian Dimension. Recent awards and accolades include the 2014 Institute for Critical Animal Studies Media Award; More Magazine’s Fierce List; 2013 Toronto Compassion for Animals Award; one of CBC’s Top 50 Champions of Change; Farm Sanctuary’s 2010 “Friend of Farm Animals” award; and HuffPost WOMEN’s “Top 10 Women trying to change the world.”

Her latest project is “The Unbound Project“. It’s about women on the front lines of animal advocacy: “I’ve dreamt of doing a project about women in animal advocacy for quite a few years. The list of inspiring women has been taped to my wall, with names added monthly. A big part of the reason I’m an activist is that I had women to look up to. I saw Jane Goodall living this extraordinary life, creating change, and I thought ‘I want to do that, too.’ The Unbound Project is my gift to the world, and to the ever-growing animal rights movement. May it inspire many, and uplift and celebrate the work of all the women in the project. Ultimately, the goal is to move people to be change-makers for animals, too.”

Jo-Anne has a new book entitled Captive. Published by Lantern Books, it will be available in April 2017. Captive is about how we see, and fail to see, animals trapped in zoos and aquaria.